AN: This chapter is the result of my Patrons voting on the preferred interlude a while ago. You will see who won as you read on ;)
Thank you to my new Patrons: A sophisticated individual, SlanneshSoldier69, Lark Sol, Cole Williamson, Erik Houk, Ethan Ratliff, Spinne Eis, Jordan Adam Bell, John Mainer, Tim Guyy, Camila Moraes, Lorvianne
-/-
Flower barely dodged another one of the darkness beams and adjusted her body specifically so that it would give her a minor laceration on the torso and cut in the cloth of her dress.
The strategy of dealing with the large black serpentine demon general was simple. First, one needed to lull him into a sense of security.
"Do you think that dodging will win you anything on this day?" the gigantic snake roared as he rushed through the air after her while she continued jumping away. "The only thing that running away in a fight gets you is a tired death!"
Flower sent some restorative qi into the wound that had just been inflicted to prevent the darkness infection that came with the attacks. Then, she had to quickly parry another large black scale with her sword.
The second part of the strategy was to frustrate the demon general, who was known for his short temper.
After a few more jumps in the air, entire mountain chains underneath them becoming decimated as the black beams shattered their peaks causing avalanches of rock rather than snow, the general seemed to finally have enough.
"You otherwise wouldn't be worthy of this spell, but seeing as all you do is run away and waste my time, I'll use it anyway!" the flying snake roared with its house-sized head. Flower meanwhile stopped in mid-air to concentrate, gathered her qi, and cycled it through her nascent soul to taint it with her dao.
From the outside, it would simply look like she was preparing to face a bigger attack and strengthening her defences. But actually, she was preparing a counter-attack.
The snake clacked shut its jaw and through his native tongue of demonic gibberish the words that Flower understood due to her own study of the language escaped. One had to understand one's enemy after all.
"A World of Darkness extinguishes all Hope," Demon General Chihuan Ru Chong, incanted with a more serious voice than he had used up until now.
Flower could see with her enhanced senses attained by forming a nascent soul the qi inside of the gigantic monster surging before spreading outwards to encapsulate a radius of several dozen miles.
It was exactly at this moment of expansion that she sent through the domain the general was creating a small sting of illusion to make it seem like she was looking around in confusion rather than forming her own hand seals. Her sword was clasped in her hands pointing downwards. Her fore and middle fingers clasped against each other while the thumbs pointed towards herself. The last two fingers were intertwined and locked in a fist.
"False World, Clashing Nirvana of the Heaven's Lament" she muttered quietly and took over the reality in a radius of approximately 5 square miles. The globe she created confined herself and the general.
As she activated the technique, her awareness split into two parts. In one part, she could see the reality as unaffected by her technique, and then in the other, she could see the reality that she would soon change. As darkness expanded all around her, she first removed it as if using an ink eraser on a messy scroll in the False World. Thus, at least in the bubble of her own technique, she could see, feel, taste and hear. However, in the real world, darkness was all that she could perceive.
"Now that you've entered the domain of darkness, you cannot run anymore because you cannot see where you're going," the general said seriously all of a sudden. "You should be honoured that you have the privilege of witnessing this before your death," he said, and Flower suddenly felt how, in the real world, her entire body and soul were suddenly squelched together into a small ball of flesh, blood and bone, the size of a marble. In the False World, she simply counteracted the effect of the localised crush and set herself to changing the structure of the world around the floating general, she did that by jumping forward and putting more force into her sword than she could reasonably create in reality and promptly decapitating the illusion of the demon to whom she had sent the illusion of her death, as she had seen it in the real world with a microscopic delay. The head tumbled off the body, and they both started falling towards the ground.
Then, dead in the real world, and alive and victorious in the false one she ended the technique. The two realities crashed together with all the violence of an exploding star. They fought for dominance and the only reason Flower's will was not crushed like the bug that she was in comparison to the will of the heavens was because she was only trying to affect such a small part of the universe.
In the end, the two forces remained deadlocked, and she suddenly felt her consciousness cease to exist as she lost the gamble of how much she had tried to affect.
A second later she woke up in the testing room with the sect leader, looking with some frustration down at the glowing Illusion Room she held in her hands.
"Five-mile radius, a simple modification of speed and cutting power of my slash with a negation of the sensory deprivation effect and the instant death compression. Failure," she reported.
The old woman slowly nodded her head with a contemplative look in her eyes, her elaborate beige robes staying completely still during the action.
"Always arrogant enough to fall for the simple trick when he drops his guard but powerful enough that it doesn't matter anyway," the old woman complained.
"We have to make it work. He'll fall for it once," Flower said. "I'll go in again."
Sect Leader Shun shook her head. "You cannot. False World, Clashing Nirvana of the Heaven's Lament, is a scripture that surpasses the small reality of the Illusion Room and brings large-scale consequences into the real world, too. You will try again in 24 hours. Perhaps by then, you will have thought of something else other than just rushing in with your sword."
Flower scowled. "You know I had to save as much qi as possible to even have a chance."
Shun shook her head. "It is pointless until you succeed. I discovered this weakness of the general 5,000 years ago when he decimated the entirety of the Eastern Brigade in the Great Wars of Darkness. That minuscule one-second window in which one can entrap him in an illusion when he is feeling particularly aggravated… I have waited so long to use this information for the reputation of our sect, but I can wait a few hundred more years.
"Respectfully speaking," Flower pointed out. "You will ascend if you wish it or not."
"I can hold it back for a few more decades, at least." The sect leader dismissed with a wave of her hand. "However, fate does seem to be weaving a tapestry in which the old guard will be replaced by the new. Me, Mad Shen, and others. The world is renewing itself in preparation for a new conflict. That is why you must be ready. Not being capable enough is not an excuse for failure," the woman said harshly.
"Is that why you're still hedging your bets on Lung? That's why he knew so quickly to sabotage my new acquisition in the inner ring?"
"Until you bring a decisive victory, there will be nothing to base your reforms on; you will simply remain a dreamer," the sect leader reminded. "Until then, I shall hedge my bets so the likelihood of the sect surviving is as high as possible in my absence."
"Lung would condemn us to ruin with his shortsightedness!" Flower exclaimed angrily, thinking of the idiot who thought that endlessly reducing the quality of what they created would not bring rise to some sort of competition or loss of revenue.
"Lung would make our sect insignificant enough that there would be no point in erasing it. The tallest nail is the one that gets hammered in. If you want to resist the hammer, become strong enough that you can actually do so instead of only saying that you would manage somehow," the sect leader replied harshly.
Flower looked angrily around the large wooden room covered in seals and insignia which protected the mountain they inhabited from any errant attack a high-level cultivator might throw out in desperation at what they still thought was an illusion.
"I'll be going then. There's no point in talking to you until you get what you want, as always," she said bitterly and made to leave.
"Have a nice day," the sect leader said with a fake smile.
Once Flower had left the room, the old woman shakily raised a hand to her face to gently run it down her wrinkled visage.
It was getting harder to resist the pull of the heavens. She would have to go soon, but the sect was still split right down the middle. Would it be her legacy that would finally lead to the Illusion Room Sect being doomed to inconsequentiality?
She refused to accept it, and she refused to go to the beyond before her foolish granddaughter was finally strong enough to shoulder the burden that she thought she could manage, not knowing that it would first deform her shoulders before destroying her soul.
"Children," she scoffed and went to return to her chambers to meditate in peace.
There were so many moving pieces that she needed clarity to guide. However, one could never predict everything.
In the end, she could only hope that the next irregularity would be in their favour rather than against.
-/-
Sect Leader Shen calmly watched Elder Zhang enter his personal quarters while stroking his long white beard. The old man would never admit that this was a self-soothing gesture, which revealed him to be more sensitive than it would be beneficial to be perceived as.
"Old friend, so nice of you to come in person instead of talking to one of my dolls," Shen rasped with an unused and wooden voice.
The Elder looked around the large room before nodding and bowing.
Shen didn't know why Zhang bothered, the room hadn't changed in hundreds of years. A large circular affair of pure stone with no windows and holding within it an absolutely hyperbolical amount of sand going several hundreds of metres deep into the earth below. Darkness was his friend for now.
"It is a pleasant enough walk," the Elder said while trying to keep a placid face.
None of the members of the sect liked seeing their leader in his true form. The form of a large tree with a weeping face etched on the front of its trunk, roots reaching so far into the ground but finding no sustenance and withered leaves hanging on only through the sheer power of the Dao and the internal qi of a high-level cultivator.
"What news do you bring to justify bringing in that small bit of fresh air and sunlight that you did?" Shen asked curiously. It was not very often that there was a need for anyone in the sect to inform him of things, considering how many of himself were currently running around.
Even now, currently concentrating on the conversation as he was, he still saw through their eyes, spoke with their voices and moved with their bodies. He felt his roots stir at the light traces of air, sunlight and earth qi sticking to Elder Zhang and instinctually repressed the growth.
He progressed that one tiniest bit towards ascension. His soul ached at having to reject it.
"I wanted to say that the thing you've been waiting for. Perhaps it has happened," the Elder started his eyes suddenly growing nostalgic and hopeful.
"Deliverance, worldly peace and harmony?" Shen asked with his cracked, barked lips.
"Hope, rather," Elder Zhang replied. He was an Elder who had much to do with hope; after all, he was the one who cared for their outer disciples.
"Speak to me then of this hope. I presume you mean the newest addition to our family?" She asked. In the past, there had been many more of him present everywhere in the sect however, in consideration of his incoming departure, he had been weaning the structure of their organisation from his permanent presence and had not thought it justified to keep one of his bodies in the outer ring when he didn't even keep one in the inner one anymore. That scary little boy from the Illusion Room Sect had been the last one to receive his private tutelage on that particular part of the mountain, and it would likely stay that way.
Unless…
"The newest disciple, Xiao Yung. He is progressing at a staggering pace. While I will say that his mentality has been strengthened and prepared for the challenges ahead by the trials he underwent to become our disciple, I do not think that we can put his talent only at the feet of the quest that he has undergone. There is something more," Elder Zhang reported contently. "He understands the mantras rather than just reciting them, fights with the staff rather than just using it, talks with his fellow disciples, and understands their woes despite not being from a similar enough background to have naturally developed that empathy. In other words, he is putting in effort but he is also a genius."
"Curious," Shen muttered. "Not to say that you are not observant enough, but when I talked with the boy, I saw a hidden darkness in him. It was a small thing bound by the reality of his station, but I saw it unfurling and grasping at the things around him already when he changed from being a mere mortal to a mortal who might one day not be one anymore."
"He has counterintuitive ideas about how cultivators should police each other for the protection of mortals," Elder Zhang admitted. "However, he does not yet understand the will of the heavens and how futile it is to fight against them. Of course, perhaps if they do bless his path, it is the correct one, and if they don't play, I imagine the future him will understand not to pursue things further."
"Interesting, but not something that changes anything. I will continue waiting and watching to see if he is the one or if he is not…" the sect leader trailed off in deep thought. "Is there anything in particular you wanted to achieve by giving me this information?" he asked straight out.
The Elder nodded awkwardly as if he were a child whose hand had been caught in the cookie jar. "Perhaps he needs personal guidance. I know that I'm not the most suited for developing talents but rather someone who is simply good at the administrative part of it."
"Do not count yourself short Zhang, you have nurtured many a seed for the sect. However, I do not think that I will listen to your request, because other than surviving that abomination of an entrance exam, the boy has not proven himself yet. I have limited energy and capacity to stay out in the sunlight and it would be cruel to a child to bring them here to witness my frail form."
"You are anything but frail!" exclaimed Elder Zhang, reassuring in a rush as if afraid that Shen's feelings would be hurt.
The human tree chuckled. "Frailty in the sense that if I were to exercise too much of my might, I would disappear. Not to die, of course, but from this world, abandoning the legacy entrusted to me before it is ready. No," he suddenly decided. "Let the boy prove himself first and think that he has earned his privileges rather than simply being gifted with them and not appreciating the opportunity. There will be a war at the borders soon; it would be a good test, would it not?" he asked.
"But if something were to happen to him," Elder Zhang started cautiously.
"You can watch him from the shadows and participate in the extermination of these so-called zombies. Alternatively, he could also go to the delayed upcoming tournament."
"The next one?" the Elder wondered. "He's not nearly ready enough, and Elder Flower said that her boy will also be participating. The inner disciples of the non-martial sect go into the outer bracket. I do not think it is wise for them to meet. Xiao's mind is still overcast by the shadow of his test."
Sect Leader Shan would have wanted to shrug but was unable to. "Our weapons are grown with care and diligence, sunlight and water. However, let us not be deluded enough to refuse the reality that one needs a certain brutality to transform the scales of the great heavenly snake into armour."
It was here that Elder Zhang proposed something out of character. "Perhaps he can do both then," the man decided. "If it would make you feel better to offer him your guidance," he finished.
"Let us do just that and see how the tapestry unfolds then."
-/-
In an underground cave far far away from human civilisation, in the great desert of the east, in an underground cave housing a large lake, there occurred a meeting between a trio of independent cultivators.
All three of them were famous, their names being whispered in the highest echelons of power in the cultivation world. One was known for his prowess in battle, one for her wisdom and one for their spiritual teachings.
However, what no one else knew about these three figures was that they had not always been human.
In that underground cave which was large enough to house a lake and high enough to erect a skyscraper; the churning of flesh and the breaking of bones suddenly resounded and all three of the human figures were no more.
On the rocky shore of the underground lake now stood a trio of large beasts. One was a gigantic dark green turtle with a shining emerald embedded in its forehead.
To its right, calmly packing at its feathers, was a brilliantly white crane which had eyes like placid water and as deep as the unexplored sea.
The last of the trio was a mighty red dragon as long as a mountain was tall and as thick as the great icy river of the North.
"To feel once again the true body is a pleasure that I have waited a very long time for," the crane suddenly spoke in a gentle voice from which it was hard to discern any specific gender.
"The longer one does not experience a pleasure, the higher the intensity of it," the turtle joked.
"Would you enjoy it then if I buried you underground in your human form for thousands of years?" the dragon asked with his roaring voice. "Get to the point. Why have you summoned us? Some of us have things to get back to other than just aimlessly flying around or tending to dead wood."
"The spirits are telling me that a new cycle will soon begin. A new opportunity," the crane said.
"The books are in agreement. What has once already come shall repeat itself once more. The great changes are always heralded by the same events."
"And what are your genius plans to make humanity coexist with us intelligent beasts this time?" the dragon mocked. "Will you give them more teachings that they are too stupid to understand or create new spiritual guidelines which they refuse to use because they would rather muck about in the mud? Let me take this cycle. Let me conquer them, and let me create peace through war."
"We agreed that every cycle would have one leading thought behind it. Too many cooks spoil the broth, as the humans would say," the turtle said humorously. "And if I remember correctly, you agreed with our reasoning all those years ago that you shall take the last of the three cycles so that you do not destroy everything and leave us with nothing to work with. Would you seek to change the agreement?"
The dragon reared back its gigantic head a bit before grudgingly shaking it. "What is the plan then, oh wise one? I think we have all learned already in this cycle that understanding does not presage peace. The spiritual leaders failed to bring about real change, drowning in the piles of shit those cultivators call societies."
"Then perhaps in this one, we shall see if a common enemy can unite all living and intelligent beings despite their species," the turtle said.
"They have been fighting against the demons for an eternity now. I would say they've had common enemy enough," the crane interjected with ruffled feathers.
The turtle gave the turtle equivalent of a shrug, which was hard to describe otherwise. "The demons are as predictable and weak as they are evil by nature. Perhaps humanity needs a more complex challenge."
"What do you need us to do then?" the dragon asked in a bored voice. "Just be ready to listen to me in the next cycle if this doesn't work out."
"I do not need you to do anything that you have not already been doing; one could say that the die has already been cast." The turtle chuckled as if laughing at a private joke.
"You and your dead languages," the dragon snorted. "Do you think we do not understand your japes? No, they are simply dull, like you. But, we agreed, and it is your turn. Let us see then what your particular brand hubris will create."
"I hope that your plan succeeds my friend, whatever it may be, I tire of this life of ours." the crane said, "It would be refreshing to change, to experience rebirth once again."
"If I'm correct in my calculations, then you doubtlessly shall," the turtle reassured.
-/-
Story Recommendation: Don't usually recommend stuff, but since I'm quite often asked about stories similar to this (involving video games), here's one. Recently found it since I like to keep myself abreast on the topics of the genre (for obvious reasons.) It's about an Isekai where the protagonist comes back to Earth, only to sell the connection to the fantasy world as a fully immersive VR game. It's pretty funny and gets into the nitty gritty of game management of development, even if there is no game being produced, lol. It's mainly a comedy and I'm recommending it because I think its good. Actually, its one of the better things I read this year, feel free to judge my taste, idc, I'm a racoon.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/dark-magician-isekai-return-and-make-fantasy-world-into-a-vr-game_31473265608666205